We read in Dr. Campbell’s Poenamo of a New Zealand girl, who was foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantly sickened, and died in the two days of simple terror.  The period is the same as in the Marquesas; doubtless the symptoms were so too.  How singular to consider that a superstition of such sway is possibly a manufactured article; and that, even if it were not originally invented, its details have plainly been arranged by the authorities of some Polynesian Scotland Yard.  Fitly enough, the belief is to-day—­and was probably always—­far from universal.  Hell at home is a strong deterrent with some; a passing thought with others; with others, again, a theme of public mockery, not always well assured; and so in the Marquesas with the tapu.  Mr. Regler has seen the two extremes of scepticism and implicit fear.  In the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing breadfruit, cheerful and impudent as a street arab; and it was only on a menace of exposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced.  The other case was opposed in every point.  Mr. Regler asked a native to accompany him upon a voyage; the man went gladly enough, but suddenly perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat, leaped back with a scream; nor could the promise of a dollar prevail upon him to advance.

The Marquesan, it will be observed, adheres to the old idea of the local circumscription of beliefs and duties.  Not only are the whites exempt from consequences; but their transgressions seem to be viewed without horror.  It was Mr. Regler who had killed the fish; yet the devout native was not shocked at Mr. Regler—­only refused to join him in his boat.  A white is a white:  the servant (so to speak) of other and more liberal gods; and not to be blamed if he profit by his liberty.  The Jews were perhaps the first to interrupt this ancient comity of faiths; and the Jewish virus is still strong in Christianity.  All the world must respect our tapus, or we gnash our teeth.

CHAPTER VII—­HATIHEU

The bays of Anaho and Hatiheu are divided at their roots by the knife-edge of a single hill—­the pass so often mentioned; but this isthmus expands to the seaward in a considerable peninsula:  very bare and grassy; haunted by sheep and, at night and morning, by the piercing cries of the shepherds; wandered over by a few wild goats; and on its sea-front indented with long, clamorous caves, and faced with cliffs of the colour and ruinous outline of an old peat-stack.  In one of these echoing and sunless gullies we saw, clustered like sea-birds on a splashing ledge, shrill as sea-birds in their salutation to the passing boat, a group of fisherwomen, stripped to their gaudy under-clothes. (The clash of the surf and the thin female voices echo in my memory.) We had that day a native crew and steersman, Kauanui; it was our first experience of Polynesian seamanship, which consists in hugging